Did You Know? 🧐

• Sidewalks on the Table: The Ad Hoc Sidewalk Committee meets today, Thursday, August 28, 2025, at 5:00 PM in Council Chambers and on Zoom. They’ll review July 8 and August 5 minutes, hear from residents (including the Krell family, who are worried about Meadow Road farm frontage), and receive an intern’s full inspection update grading sidewalks A through F. D and F sidewalks may be forced into repair notices.
• History Meets Finance: The 1928 Building Committee Financial Subcommittee met Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 4:00 PM to approve more than $1.9 million in invoices for the Town Hall renovation. The biggest ticket was $1.72 million to KBE Building Corporation, plus a stack of change orders — from cupola rot repairs ($11,514.88) to HVAC duct redesign ($62,481.10).
• Zoom Links: Both meetings are accessible remotely. Sidewalk Committee: Zoom Webinar. 1928 Building Committee: Zoom Webinar.
• Farmington, Where Concrete Matters: These aren’t just bureaucratic footnotes. One decides where your kids walk to school. The other decides how to fix the dome above your clerk’s office. That’s Farmington in action.

Sidewalks and Cupolas: Two Farmington Meetings, Two Different Fixes 🏛️👟

Farmington holds two consequential meetings this week, one devoted to the town’s sidewalks and the other to the decades-long effort to restore and adapt the 1928 Town Hall building.

Sidewalk Committee: Farming, Walking, and Conflicts
At 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 28, 2025, the Ad Hoc Sidewalk Committee convenes in the Town Hall Council Chambers and via Zoom. On the agenda: public comment, approval of minutes from July 8 and August 5, and a comprehensive sidewalk inspection update.

The inspection, led by intern Thomas Boyd Clark, has graded Farmington’s sidewalks on a scale from A to F. Most are in the B/C range, but streets such as Harold Road and Stafford Road dipped into the D category, while Waterville Road and Maiden Lane earned outright Fs. Those grades trigger enforcement letters and possible town repairs.

Resident concern remains sharpest on Meadow Road, where members of the Krell family have argued that a new sidewalk would disrupt century-old farmland. Their letter warned of drainage issues, pesticide exposure, and potential pedestrian intrusion into cultivated fields. The town, however, has already secured a grant covering half of construction and may proceed regardless.

1928 Building Committee: Dollars and Rot
Two days earlier, on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 4:00 p.m., the 1928 Building Committee Financial Subcommittee met to review construction costs. The panel approved an invoice package exceeding $1.9 million, dominated by KBE Building Corporation’s $1.72 million payment request for its sixth application.

The subcommittee also signed off on multiple change orders:

• Basement infill masonry to patch boiler-removal voids: $4,106.54
• Storm drainage modifications: $8,000.00
• Arc fault breaker in the Town Clerk vault: $1,039.50
• HVAC duct redesign after demo revealed missing/undersized ducts: $62,481.10
• Cupola rot repairs: $11,514.88
• Exterior wall thickness adjustments in the gym: $3,044.55
• Additional precast stone replacements: $21,600.00

One credit was also booked: –$6,888.80 for stairwell railings deemed safe enough to keep.

The invoices underscore how “adaptive reuse” of a nearly century-old municipal structure is rarely straightforward. Wood rot and duct gaps appear just as inevitably as cost overruns.

Two Meetings, One Theme
Whether it’s sidewalks or cupolas, both committees are wrestling with the same Farmington problem: how to modernize without erasing the past. In one room, residents defend farmland frontage; in another, engineers patch walls first drawn in the Coolidge administration.

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About the Author

Jack Beckett is still fueled almost entirely by coffee ☕, which pairs poorly with cupola repair invoices but keeps him awake through sidewalk rating spreadsheets.

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Creative Commons License

© 2025 The Farmington Mercury / Mercury Local
This article, “Sidewalks and Cupolas: Farmington Committees Confront Infrastructure Realities,” by Jack Beckett is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.

“Sidewalks and Cupolas: Farmington Committees Confront Infrastructure Realities”
by Jack Beckett, The Farmington Mercury (CC BY-ND 4.0)